Farewell Madelaine!

One of our suppliers has sold their business. Madelaine Inc. was run by Jon Bixler and his wife from the small Northern California town of Willits for the last 13 years or so. They manufactured their own products which consisted of their popular PG Solution, Crystal Gels and more recently their new cigar humidor line. They always delivered a quality product to us. Just this week the Bixlers sold their operation to Xikar, for whom they made products for on a private label business.

Thanks Jon for all your help….and good luck to you!

VaultMaster

Cigar Smoking Presidential Wannabe’s

Speaking of government and with the 2008 national elections not so far away, there are some candidates for the Presidency who are smokers, or know one:

• On the Democratic side, wunderkind Senator Barack Obama of Illinois is a cigarette smoker who says he wants to quit and is reportedly trying.
• Fellow Democrat Hillary Clinton is married to a smoker (you remember him, don’t you?), but while living in the White House, she enforced a no-smoking policy inside the building that sent her husband/President outdoors when he was actually smoking his cigars.
• Republican front-runner Rudy Giuliani of New York is a well-known and long-time cigar lover.
• Republican Rep. Tom Tancredo of Colorado is a cigar smoker of the first stripe and was part of a dust-up over smoking in his office with an aide to a Representative in the next office. Tancredo continues to smoke and enjoys Perdomo Reserve cigars among others.
• Undeclared but possible Republican candidate Fred Thompson of Tennessee is a cigar smoker as well and reportedly has a preference for Cuban cigars . . . when he can get them. He’s been shown smoking in many of his film and television appearances and had a cigar in hand in his brilliant video retort to a challenge by filmmaker Michael Moore to a debate.

On the other side is the possible independent candidature of billionaire ex-Republican Michael Bloomberg, currently the Mayor of New York. A former smoker, he is virulently anti-tobacco and not only pushed through the New York smoking ban, but promised $125 million of his own fortune to “help” push the anti-tobacco message worldwide.

Listing Courtesy of CigarCyclopedia

Cello or No Cello?

Ah, that is the question! We get asked this a lot and I thought I might jot down our thoughts on this topic in the wee hours of the night. A few decades ago, some smart aleck thought it would be great to wrap cigars in plastic wrap so they will stay fresh longer. Sounded great at the time. However, they did know that the average cigar contained 14% moisture content when it left the manufactures plant. What they forgot was that ordinary plastic wrap doesn’t breathe, and so all that humidity got trapped in the non-breathable plastic wrap and thousands of cigars were ruined by mold! Great idea, wrong application. But don’t worry, the cellophane wrappers they have on cigars now is permeable or breathable. So mold is not a problem with the relatively new cellophane wrappers. The question is:

Do I need to keep it on?

What are the effects on aging my cigars with the cellophane on?

First of all, no you don’t need to keep the cellophane on, it really is a matter of personal taste. But we feel there are good reasons to leave them on. First, it does provide a level of protection from some inadvertant rough handling….not to mention it keeps the oils from our hands off of the wrappers. Also, if one cigar should get mold or a beetle growing inside it, it won’t spread to the other cigars in the box or humidor. Bad enough one cigar gets turned to dust by beetles, but a whole box lost to the beetles is something else!

As to the question of cellophanes effects on long-term aging of cigars with the cellophane on….our answer would be….we don’t know! We smoke our cigars before they get too old. Seriously though, we have cigars in our humidors for over two years with the cellophanes on and we haven’t noticed a descenible difference in taste. Many serious cigar aficionados swear that the cellophane will slow down the aging process and prevent your cigar from aging properly and as such will affect the cigars overall taste!

Whatever you do, take them off or leave them on, it really is up to you and your personal preference. CigarCyclopedia has a good article that comments on this issue….to read the article, click here.

VaultMaster

Winter Time Humidor Blues?

Having trouble keeping your humidity level in your humidor at acceptable levels? Colder weather always plagues cigar humidors as it has a drying effect and knocks down your humidity levels.

Try adding some passive devices to your humidors. Crystal Gels come in small jars that can easily fit in almost any size humidor. These add an immediate humidity boost and they also help prevent mold as well. Or just try a small dish of distilled water or PG Solution to your humidors for a quick boost in humidity.

When the warmer weather rolls around you will be able to remove these passive devices as you will no longer need them.

VaultMaster

They’re at it Again!

Just when you thought the cigar industry dodged a bullet with the recent cigar tax issue, now the government is using the FDA to try and regulate how cigars are made! As Rich Perlman put it in his post at CigarCyclopedia, “Can you imagine some deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. Food & Drug Administration telling Carlos Fuente or Henke Kelner or Orlando Padron how to make cigars?“

Well it just may happen! To read the entire sad tale as reported by Rich Perlman, click here

VaultMaster

Welcome to our Blog!

Our intention in creating this blog is to bring relevant news and articles to you regarding anything that is cigars. Since we are in the industry as owners of Humidor Vault, we thought that we might be able to bring useful information to our customers. We hope you find our posts informative and fun…that’s what blog’s are supposed to be, right? So feel free to leave your comments! Thank you for visiting!

VaultMaster